Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I was installing Ubuntu the other day and when I saw the screens asking for donations via paypal, I suddenly had an idea.

Crypto Linux...

A new distro, maybe debian/ubuntu based, but designed to be crypto-currency friendly right through.

Now I saw the other day someone has figured out a version of linux which comes ready made for mining rigs, so that is a start; but just imagine if this was taken to it's logical conclusion!

- Donate to improve the OS easily by whatever crypto you like best

- Donate to software development projects, games, killer apps, true rivals to the programs that keep us stuck using winblows.

- Automatic detection of graphics hardware that is good for mining, with a friendly prompt asking if you would like to mine using whatever hardware you have.

The opensource world has always lagged behind the closed source proprietary software world because it costs so much money to build good quality software and no one wants to pay for opensource code to be written because they can't make money from it... well that can change, the system itself can expand and grow according to whatever it's users want to see and don't mind making a small token contribution to.

Want a perfect clone of counter-strike? sure why not...

Want a program that is better than Photoshop? Me too, I'd throw a couple of million satoshi towards that project!

This can work, and could potentially become the dominant desktop OS, creating a real difficult problem for any governments that want to ban cryptos and keep themselves in the software stoneage, paying fiat currency for software licenses and product keys to unlock software that is not as good, can get viruses and spyware and has to be paid for again at each major new version!

If you like this idea and you want to see it happen, share it far and wide. Someone out there will have the knowledge of how to get it started. I can't .. I'm a Perl programmer and I don't have time to acquire the requisite skills whilst I pay my fiat currency bills :(

It sounds great!
But now the next step, How? Are you on it?
For porjects like this it might be useful to use trello.com, If you have any idea how to do this...

I think the next step is gathering people who are interested and have the technical knowledge needed to create a new Linux Distro. I use Linux servers all the time and I can set one up and install Perl modules from CPAN and what not, but I've never tried to build a new distro.

We need a repository system, perhaps decentralised so anyone running Crypto Linux (or whatever it's gonna be called) can share a small portion of the bandwidth for new installs to download packages. Maybe there should be a small incentive to donate bandwidth, say like if someone is setting up a new machine with the OS and your machine happens to be the one that serves a given software module to them, you get paid a token amount of Satoshi.

This way we can combine the power of financially funded closed source development, with the openness and freedom of the opensource world. Programmers can create new stuff and set it available to the world, and get paid when it gets downloaded by others. If your particular package becomes part of some hugely popular piece of software you could get loads of revenue to either trade in the system for stuff you want for your computer, real world goods and services or even if you really want it... some fiat tender (*ick*).

One way I know of to make your own distro is using LinuxBBQ http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bbqsnapshot it's based on Debian Sid.